Astrometry of natural satellites Improving the dynamics of planetary systems with old observations

V Robert (1, 2) , D Pascu (3) , V Lainey (1) , Jean-Eudes Arlot (1)

1 IMCCE - Institut de Mécanique Céleste et de Calcul des Ephémérides
2 IPSA - Institut Polytechnique des Sciences Avancées
3 Retraité

A new astrometric reduction of old photographic plates, benefiting from modern technologies such as sub-micrometric scanners associated with a reduction using accurate catalogues (UCAC at the present time and GAIA in a near future), provides improved knowledge of the orbital motion of planetary satellites.In the framework of an international collaboration first, and in the FP7 ESPaCE european project afterward, U.S. Naval Observatory plates were digitized with the new generation DAMIAN scanning machine of the Royal Observatory of Belgium. The procedure was applied to a few hundred photographic plates of the Galilean satellites covering the years 1967-1998, and of the Martian satellites covering the years 1967-1997. We provide results with an accuracy better than 70 mas in (RA,Dec) positions of the Galilean moons, and better than 60 mas in (RA,Dec) positions of the Martian satellites.Since the positions of Jupiter and Mars may be deduced from the observed (RA,Dec) positions of their satellites, we can also assess the accuracy of the ephemerides of Jupiter and Mars.

Domaines: Planétologie et astrophysique de la terre [astro-ph.EP]

V Robert, D Pascu, V Lainey, Jean-Eudes Arlot. Astrometry of natural satellites Improving the dynamics of planetary systems with old observations. American Astronomical Society, DDA meeting #45, May 2014, Philadelphie, United States. ⟨hal-01137766⟩